Our Stories
The Biodiversity Project: Meet the Falkiner Family
Since 2020 Country Road has partnered with Landcare Australia on The Biodiversity Project to revegetate land, improve native habitat and increase biodiversity.
This year, Haddon Rig Station, a farm producing cotton and wool on the Traditional Lands of the Ngiyampaa Wayilwan People in Central West New South Wales, has joined the initiative. The first farm in the Macquarie Valley region to take part in The Biodiversity Project, Haddon Rig Station is also the first participating property to focus on protecting native wetlands.
Here, fourth-generation farmer Olivia Falkiner shares what the land means to her family and how the project will protect the wildlife that lives on it for years to come.
For more than a century, the Falkiner family has held the property at Haddon Rig Station, evolving and improving farming and caring for the land as it passes from generation to generation.
“When my great-grandfather Frank first purchased Haddon Rig in 1916, the entire property was used to produce Merino sheep,” says Olivia.
“Then over time—and in line with markets and seasons—we've evolved, with my dad, George, developing cotton irrigation and dryland farming in the 90s in response to the wool crash of 1991. Today, around half the land use here is cotton and dryland farming [relying solely on rainfall rather than irrigation] and we also run commercial cattle and sheep.”
She explains that diversifying crops makes sense from an economic point of view.
“Having several crops provides a good diversity of enterprise and income. Cotton in this valley has played a significant role in the economy and in creating employment. It's been a major economic engine for the past 30 years in Warren, and we've been proud to be part of that growth and to have played a role in keeping the community going.”
Just as crop diversity is essential financially, an abundance of native wildlife on the property indicates healthy soils and waterways and a thriving ecosystem. Located within a network of ecological wetlands, waterways and river systems, Haddon Rig supports an extensive range of fauna and flora, including white-plumed honeyeaters, wedgetail eagles, brolgas and royal spoonbills.
“Both our parents love nature,” says Olivia. “Our dad calls himself a twitcher, so we grew up taking our tinny down the creeks and rivers, looking at birds and wildlife and identifying all the different species like magpie geese, brolgas, pelicans and kookaburras. Our mum is a landscape painter so she's given us a really deep appreciation of the nature and trees we have here. We were brought up to believe that trees are sacred and that we've got to do everything we can to look after them.”
Haddon Rig has various long-established partnerships in place to monitor environmental change and ensure that on-farm activities are enhancing biodiversity. Olivia is excited about what The Biodiversity Project will mean for the future of the farm and the wildlife it supports.
Haddon Rig, Country Road and Landcare Australia have partnered together to plant 2000 native trees on a natural marshland on our farm. It's an area where we get a lot of migratory birds and protected species, so we wanted to reforest the area and fence it off so that it was protected from non-native species such as feral pigs, which do a lot of damage. Now that's done, we'll work together to make sure the trees grow and last into the future.
Taking place on 1.1 kilometres of floodplain habitat along the Wemabung Creek, the project will support biodiversity by revegetating 24 hectares of seasonal marshland known as Wilga Wetland. Planting comprises a mix of shrubs, understory and canopy species to increase vegetation along the riparian corridor, thereby also improving habitat for wildlife, including pollinators, smaller birds and micro bats, which feed on insects and potential pests.
“Wetlands are an important part of the ecosystem. They provide a habitat to endangered and protected species year-round, but they also provide a habitat to migratory species like magpie geese. Between September and March, we get a lot of species that you wouldn't see at other times of the year, and they need those points along their journey to stop and nest and to have a safe place to breed and keep going. Marshlands and wetlands also provide a really important role in fostering native grasses—but also filtering air and water.”
Olivia says that even after the planting and fencing works that were originally planned had been completed, the momentum continued.
“Once Country Road and Haddon Rig had started this, we then kept going with the same team, and Landcare Australia, and planted another 2000 trees of our own volition. So the program had a lot further reach than originally expected.” Olivia believes that with help from the right partners, on-farm productivity and biodiversity can complement one another.
Projects like The Biodiversity Project with Country Road are integral to that because a lot of the time you don't have the resources to do it by yourself. There's some years where cashflow is so tight you can't do much, even if you want to. So it's great to have actors on the ground who are benefiting from what we're doing and who are in the supply chain, who are happy to encourage and help deliver those projects as well.
Currently pregnant with her first child, Olivia's appreciation for the land around her has intensified. “I feel like every year I want to keep working to make sure this is here not just for the children in our family, but for generations to come, as well as the broader community so they can enjoy the amazing birds, trees and marshlands and wildlife that we are so lucky to have. I think there's also an intrinsic value to protecting these assets, not for any human benefit, but because they are becoming rarer and performing an increasingly important function within the broader environment and ecosystem. We never know what role they'll play in the future.”
The protection of all of our natural assets at Haddon Rig is something I want to keep building on within our chapter of custodianship of this place. I hope every year we can pick a different area or natural asset we need to protect or enhance so that by the time we leave in 50 years, it's in a better place than when we took it on.
